“Just the salve you give him,” Vere sighed, as Kyle nodded so earnestly that Justyn had some hope that the man might actually remember what he’d been told.
“At night, before you sleep, I want you to change the dressing again, with fresh, clean cloth. I want you to have all the rags you use for dressings washed thoroughly in boiling water and hung to dry in the sun.” Sometimes he wondered if they’d pay more attention to the things he told them to do if he gave them some kind of nonsense to say over each task, as a kind of charm against sickness. But no, he was afraid that if he did that, they would trust in the charm and forget cleanliness. How could he get them to believe that there were invisible animals living in filth that made wounds fester, if he couldn’t get them to believe in him?
Thank the gods they at least knew the signs of infection and gangrene. “Examine the wound carefully each time you change the dressing, and if you see anything wrong, come to me at once. Remember, you’re watching for infection, and that can include swelling, red streaks coming up or down your leg from the wound, skin that’s hot to touch and more sore than it should be. Understand?”
“Come to you at once,” Kyle repeated, nodding vigorously.
“All right,” Justyn said, and sagged back in his chair. He waved a hand at them. “You can all go now.”
Harris and Vere each took one of Kyle’s arms and heaved him up out of his chair. Justyn didn’t offer him any more of the precious poppy-powder; he didn’t have much, and he had to save it. There was no telling when the next trader would come with the powder he’d ordered almost a year ago.
Rather surprisingly, Kyle made it erect without too much in the way of a wobble, and he didn’t lean on the two farmers nearly as much as Justyn thought he would.
The benefits of an iron constitution and a head like a granite boulder, I suppose, he thought dispassionately. He’d probably have healed up all right without me, which is likely what Vere and Harris will be telling each other.
He leaned back in his chair and massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Kyllian had been right; this was a place where he - and a successor - were desperately needed, and it was a place where they would get little thanks and no credit for what they did. People honored the spectacular, not the everyday. Raise a dead man and bring him back to life, and they would hold you in awe. Keep him from dying in the first place with a little simple hygiene, and they ignored you.
What was he to do? He had known what he was up against when he arrived here. And what was he going to do about a successor? If he couldn’t somehow bring the boy around, he would have to find someone willing to do the hard work without any magic at all.
Women tended-to be more community minded than men, and in this village at least, they were used to taking on the more objectionable of community tasks; perhaps he ought to check among the girls and see if any of them were willing to learn all he could teach them about bonesetting and herbs and the like. It wouldn’t hurt Darian to see that he had a rival for Justyn’s tutelage. That might get him interested again when nothing else seemed to.
The only problem with that idea was that it would be hard for a young girl to get a mature man to listen and obey her when it came to following instructions. That had been the idea behind sending a man here in the first place.
If only I could regain my magic! If I could impress the people here, that might bring Darian around. If he just thought that he had a chance of being seen with respect as long as he learned what I have to teach, that might change his attitude.
He turned his attention to the apple sitting on the plate on the end of the table where Harris had put it. He narrowed his focus and concentrated on the fruit, as he had so often and so easily, feeling a now-familiar headache arc across his head, just behind his right eyebrow. He didn’t remember the blow that had felled him, but he fancied that it had felt a lot like that stabbing pain.
He willed the apple to rise. This time! Surely this time!
It wobbled a bit on the plate, but did not move.
Still, he continued to concentrate on it, and it rocked faster and faster but still refused to rise, until” the pain behind his right eye was enough to blind him. With a sigh, he dropped the apple with his mind, and it stopped moving.
“I’m an old fraud,” he said out loud. “I’m a failure and an old fraud, my apprentice hates me and hates magic, and you - “ he looked at his cat, which was licking itself again “ - probably aren’t even a familiar. And even if you are, you’re a failure, too. If a whirlwind came out of the sky and swallowed us all up, no one would ever notice, that’s how unimportant we are. What do you think of that?”
The cat went on cleaning itself, sticking a scraggly, flea-gnawed leg straight up in the air, arse toward Justyn. He chuckled bitterly, for the cat’s silence seemed the only fitting comment.
Two
Even grief as profound as Darian’s could not be sustained for too long, and after lying exhausted in his hiding place for a time, other feelings began to penetrate his sorrow, all of them maddeningly persistent, and utterly ordinary. It was irritating - which in itself was irritating - to have stupid things like a nose that was sore and stuffed up from crying, and an ant crawling up his leg inside his breeches, intrude on something as profound as his grief. But that didn’t stop them from intruding. His arms and legs felt cramped, his hands stung where he’d pounded them against the bark and scraped them, and one hip hurt, jammed as it was against the hard bark of the tree. Finally he decided it was time to leave. He sat up, his eyes sore and dry, and peered down through the branches to see if there was anyone about to catch him when he climbed down.
There was no one working in the field below, and from the fact that the long shadows of the trees had crept over the village, he’d been up here a while. He guessed that the women who usually worked in the bean field had probably left their work to go prepare dinner for the men and children. The wind was in the wrong direction for him to catch aromas coming from the village, but it was a good bet that if he could smell anything, it would be the mingled aromas of stews, soups, pies and pasties, same as always.
I wonder why they bother making individual dinners.
Surely it would make more sense just to make one big pot of stew for the whole village, he thought, with a touch of contempt. After all, everyone in the village uses the same half-dozen recipes. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to make anything new since I’ve been here.
Perhaps it was that, as difficult as things were, there were still some who were more prosperous than the rest, who could afford a little more meat and spices in their food, and who made sure to enjoy that distinction from everyone else whenever the opportunity presented itself.
As if by sharing a bit of spice with everyone else they’d lose the chance to lord it over their neighbors, he thought sourly. The half-dozen “well-to-do” families were the ones who seemed to go out of their way to complain about his behavior. As if they didn’t already have the best houses in town, and can even pay somebody else to cook and clean for them!